The Tuesday broadcast drew a 15.7 rating and a 28 share, up from the Sydney Olympics in 2000 but slightly down from last Tuesday's broadcast, which had a rating of 18.2. The 12-day prime-time average of 26.1 million is up 14% from Sydney over the same period.

Younger demographic
According to Nielsen Media Research, NBC's Olympic coverage through Tuesday is attracting a younger demographic. Viewers aged 12 to 34 are up 7.6% from the 2000 games, drawing a 7.1 rating vs. 6.6 in 2000.

While the average rating for men (ages 25 to 54) has stayed the same, women (25 to 54) grew from an 10.8 rating in 2000 to 11.2 for the first 12 days of the games.

A share is a percentage of television households that have their TV sets on at a given time. A rating is a percentage of all TV households, whether or not their sets are turned on. (For example, a 1.0 rating is 1% of the total U.S. households with TV.)

9.8 million Web visitors
NBC Universal also reported that 9.8 million unique visitors have logged on to NBCOlympic.com. Unique visitors is a measurement that counts the number of individual people who visit a site in a given period of time; no matter how many times they return during that period, they are only counted once. The network said all unique visitors had turned a total of 200 million page views -- indicating that each person during all the visits have made so far has interacted with 20 different Web pages.

International stats
Internationally, Nielsen Media Research reported that New Zealand TV coverage of the Games drew the world's highest level of viewership for the opening ceremonies in Athens, with 75% of the country's households tuning in. The country has athletes competing in rowing, shooting and men's basketball. The second-highest level of viewership on the opening day was in Finland, where 64% of the households watched.